
FOXBORO -- After a down day for most of his team's top players Thursday, Bill Belichick and his staff have a fairly big day planned for Friday.
After five padded practices in the last six days, the Patriots will hold their first intrasquad scrimmage of the summer.
"We're going to do some team situational work today and try to put a lot of the segmeneted piortions of practice together," Belichick said. "Down and distance, moving the field, kicking situations, communication, play-calling and so-forth, clock.
"As many things as we can kind of work into this practice and create kind of similar to a game situation. That's what we're going to do today. We'll see how it goes, but that will give us a day of experience as a team of doing it. Hopefully the overall operation will go smoother when we have to do it next week."
This will give the Patriots an opportunity not only to hone their awareness as they shift quickly from one situation to the next, but it will also give them some practice when it comes to getting on and off the field -- which can be a challenge when there's a cast of 90 players on and around one field.
"This is putting it all together instead of doing one thing for a sustained period of time, which isn't really the way football is played," Belichick said. "This gives us a chance to simulate a moving game. First down, second down, third down, ball moves, fp moves, kicking unit comes on the field, another offensive and defensive unit comes out on the exchange. That's how you play. You don't run ten first-down plays in a row. You don't run eight third-down plays in a row or eight sub blitzes in a row or 10 punts in a row. That's just not football. Those are good teaching methods and they're more efficient so there's a place for that. But there's a place for trying to simulate a game."